Tkachuk has been back on the ice for over a month and is ready for Panthers training camp
Tkachuk has been back on the ice for over a month and is ready for Panthers training camp
The Florida Panthers will be taking the ice for training camp later this week as the NHL’s defending Eastern Conference Champions.
They came within three wins of a Stanley Cup, but an avalanche of injuries caused the team to crumble under the weight of a tough and talented Vegas Golden Knights team that was firing on all cylinders at the perfect time.
Some of those injuries remain lingering, as Florida is expected to be without defensemen Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour until at least November as both are recovering from offseason shoulder surgery.
Panthers star forward Matthew Tkachuk was injured so badly during the Final against Vegas that he couldn’t finish the series, having to sit out Game 5 after gutting out Game 4 with a cracked sternum that he suffered during Game 3.
The same Game 3 that Tkachuk scored a late, game-tying goal (with that fractured sternum) leading to Carter Verhaeghe’s overtime winner about 30 minutes later.
As amazing as it may seem, with just three months having passed since he suffered the injury, Tkachuk is now fully healed and good to go for Panthers training camp.
“I'm feeling great, excited to be back,” Tkachuk said. “It was a very short offseason, which is exactly how I want it going forward. Just a lot of excitement level to be back down here in Florida. After last year and the way it finished up, I’m just chomping at the bit right now.”
Between coming up short in the Stanley Cup Final and then having to suffer through the recovery process of an extremely painful injury, Tkachuk was also chomping at the bit to get his offseason started.
The plan had been to do some traveling with family and friends, but that became a challenge.
Once he was able to move around comfortably, Tkachuk had to squeeze everything he wanted to do into a limited time window.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It's exactly how I want it,” he said. “I want to be a short offseason for the rest of my career.”
Tkachuk and his teammates were all together on Monday at the swank Weston Hills Country Club to take part in the Florida Panthers Foundation annual golf tournament.
Similarly to his summer travel schedule delay, Tkachuk had to wait until getting the green light from doctors before he could get back on the golf course.
“I got cleared a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “So I’ve played a few times. This is like my fourth time in two weeks, so I’m trying to cram it all in before the season starts.”
It was Thursday, June 8 when Tkachuk suffered his broken sternum during Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final. He played his last game on June 10, and Florida’s season ended three nights later.
An offseason that began with healing and rest was eventually able to resume some sense of normalcy in terms of on-ice training.
It was about two months after initially suffering the injury when Tkachuk was able to get back on the ice and start shooting a puck again.
From there, as Tkachuk explained, it was just a matter of getting back into a familiar frame of mind.
“Once you do it a few times and you're comfortable, like I've been doing all the normal stuff for a few weeks now,” he said. “I worked super hard to get myself feeling like I am right now, and to be honest, I thought it was going to be a little bit longer than what it was.
“It was, right out of the gate, definitely very frustrating. I didn’t think I was ever going to get better, I'm sure it's what everybody says of injuries, but I'm very happy with where I'm at right now and hopefully peaking at the right time here.”
Another thing that comes with an athlete recovering from a serious injury is that they can now shift their focus elsewhere.
In Tkachuk’s case, that meant remembering what it felt like to go on that playoff run, and knowing the blood, sweat and tears that must be sacrificed to reach the mountaintop.
“There's definitely that hunger, especially when you get that that close,” he said. “I think we're in a great spot mindset-wise, where we know what it takes and we have the hunger to do it. It's a pretty short-term mindset though right now, it's have a good camp, get off to a good start. I'd say the long-term goal is we’ve got to make playoffs. We saw what happened last year, so we can't think too far ahead, but playoffs is what's on everybody's mind, certainly on ours.”
The Panthers will take the ice for training camp on Thursday at the Ice Den in Coral Springs.
Their season begins on Oct. 12 in Minnesota.